Brief from the Chairman of the Board
Spring 2025
Greetings Tailhookers,
2024 was a banner year for your Tailhook Educational Foundation (TEF). Total 2024 TEF supporter contributions surpassed $1,650,000 this year. This is over $600,000 more in charitable support than we have ever received in a single year. Your kind, unwavering generosity continues to grow each year.
Please know your loyal support remains the single reason TEF is empowered to grow both the number of scholarships our student-applicants can earn and the value of each grant every year. Last year scholarship awardees earned 136 consequential grants averaging over $4,100 each. These grants make a positive, measurable, and inspiring impact on the lives of these superstar awardees. On behalf of our scholarship awardees last and each year and our entire Tailhook Educational Foundation team, please accept my sincere appreciation for your generous patronage to our Naval Aviation legacy students last year and our continued gratitude in advance for your charitable giving in future years.
TEF’s annual scholarship application season runs from mid-December to mid-February. Applicants receive email notifications on the status of their application in April and we match grant awardees with specific scholarships early in May. Awardees receive a hard-copy letter from our TEF Executive Director in late June advising them of the scholarship they earned and its value. We update our TEF Donor and Scholarship awardee web pages in June and awardee grant checks are mailed to college offices by the last week in July.
If you have any questions about the TEF scholarship timeline or the application or awardee selection processes, please visit our website, or call us at (858) 689-9223.
In December 2024 we started collecting donations for our 2025 reunion scholarship. This year, our TEF Board of Directors voted to name that scholarship to pay tribute to our The Hook magazine editors. Tailhook published our first The Hook magazine in June of 1973, it was four pages long. Since then, The Hook magazine has evolved into a world-class publication. If you’d like to contribute to our new perennial scholarship named after our The Hook magazine editors with a 2025 contribution, please indicate this on your donation form or memo line of your check to TEF. Another quick way to do donate is to use the QR code shown below which takes you directly to our GiveDirect web page donation form.
In January 2025, we were honored to welcome Commander Al Krause USN (Ret) into our leadership ranks as a new TEF officer. When you next see or speak with him, please join us in welcoming aboard Al ‘Fatal’ Krause to the TEF team.
In closing, TEF remains sincerely grateful for the generosity of our industry and organizational partners, our like-minded sponsors and donors, and our committed individual Tailhook members. Your continued support is vital to our annual fundraising efforts and our ability to fund TEF grants each year.
We look forward to thanking your all in-person at Hook 2025 August 21-23 at our superb Hook Symposium venue, the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada.
Ted Branch
Vice Admiral USN(Ret)
Chairman of the Board
Tailhook Educational Foundation
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About The TEF
The Tailhook Educational Foundation (TEF) is a charitable nonprofit California corporation created in February 1992. The Foundation's charter is "to educate the nation's public with regard to the history and present day activities of the United States Navy carrier aviation and its importance to our country's national security."
The main activities of the Foundation are:
To support the Tailhook Association
To distribute The Hook magazine to schools throughout the nation at no cost to the schools
To provide scholarships to qualified applicants
To support U.S Navy and Naval Aviation leadership
TEF Scholarships
TEF awards over 100 scholarships annually averaging more than $4,000 per grant with our top grant awarded at $15,000
Funding TEF scholarships is achieved either annually or perennially.
Perennial Scholarships
A perennial scholarship is funded by donating $70,000 or more to TEF. A $70,000 TEF Scholarship portfolio yields a $3,500 grant for your named scholarship per year in perpetuity.
An $80,000 TEF Scholarship portfolio yields a $4,000 grant for your named scholarship per year in perpetuity. Several of TEF’s perennial scholarship portfolios now exceed $100,000, all yielding at least $5,000 in an annual grant.
Sponsors funding perennial scholarships should also add funds to their portfolio whenever they can to ensure these portfolios continue to grow to keep pace with the increasing costs of colleges (1%~2% per year). When donations to existing perennial portfolios reach $10,000 or more, the annual grant yield for that scholarship increases $500 per year from that year on.
Annual Pass-through scholarships
An annual or “pass-through” scholarship is funded by providing TEF a payment of $3,000 or more each year to sponsor your named scholarship that year.
Pass through scholarship donations can also be for more than $3,000, and they can change each year by donating more than $3,000.
TEF’s current annual scholarships average more than $3,000 with our top grant awarded at $15,000.
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TEF awards over 100 scholarships annually averaging more than $3,250 per grant with our top grant awarded at $15,000.
A number of our annual scholarships are awarded to students pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) curriculum. All TEF grants assist Naval Aviation legacy undergraduate students obtain a higher education.
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Scholarship Eligibility
To qualify for a Tailhook Educational Foundation scholarship, an individual must graduate from high school and be the natural, step, or adopted child or grandchild of a current or former (U.S. Navy / U.S. Marine Corps / U.S. Coast Guard) Naval Aviator, Naval Flight Officer, or Naval Aircrewman. Also eligible are individuals or children/grandchildren of individuals who are serving or have served on board a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier. Eligible applicants must also be accepted for undergraduate enrollment at an accredited college.
Applications are available at 1200 NOON PT on 16 December 2024 through Monday, 1200 NOON PT 17 February 2025
Scholarship Timeline
